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Updated: June 19, 2025
He had suddenly scented the perfume of Zulannah the courtesan. He looked to right, to left and all about him, eyed with disfavour the dirty woman so close to him, who stood crookedly, with an evil leer to one eye; frowned and walked away to the platform from which the train starts for Luxor.
And then to the sinister sound of the rushing feet there was added the baying of many pariah dogs which, from every conceivable corner and from miles away, raced like a pack of wolves upon the Steppes, to join the hunt. Blind with terror, shaking in agony, Zulannah fumbled helplessly for the special brick; it lay, she knew, in the third row and had as mark a jutting piece of mortar in the middle.
He found his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated riches in his hovel.
"The watchmen that went about the city found me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the wall took away my veil from me." The night before Ben Kelham's return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile of cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the filthy, smoke-filled hovel.
Zulannah the courtesan peered down upon her from between the silken curtains of her balcony, and clapped her hands twice so that her woman-slaves ran quickly to watch and whisper about this white woman who stood unattended in the open market. They giggled in the insufferable Eastern way, and pointed across the Square, where the whole of the male population surged about two men.
And urging the mare with the whip of love to the uttermost of her wonderful speed, he thundered back across the path of sand, which was to be trodden by his feet alone, in spite of the plots which Zulannah the courtesan was even then weaving about him to her own advancement. ". . . . and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window."
It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as an anonymous letter usually is.
She drives with him," he spat, "she should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the thousand lovers." The woman paid no heed to the jibe. "Who told thee?" "Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water sent me word." "Why?" "That is no business of thine. Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy head. Dost desire the death of the three?"
Love comes to harlots and to queens as well as to us ordinary women, and they suffer every whit as much as we do, perhaps more keenly on account of the hopeless positions they fill. It had come to Zulannah, uncontrollably, that night when, unveiled, garbed in silks and satins and hung with jewels, she brazenly graced the stage-box at a gala performance.
Anyway, they came to an understanding which ensured the eunuch's silence at the price of so much good money, paid in instalments. Qatim had no intention of holding to his side of the agreement, nor his brother to his as is the way of such breed of Oriental. Then, just as he was, clad only in loin-cloth and with whip in hand, the gigantic brute strode to the House of Zulannah.
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